A wide area measurement system (WAMS) is a technology developed to improve the stability of the power system in the past few decades, which provides a distributed control structure of a highly interconnected power system. However, the critical issues of security in WAMSs are rising to a new class of control problems due to the malicious attacks. This work studies the distributed model predictive control (DMPC) problem for wide area measurement power systems under malicious attacks. The malicious attacks model as time-varying data injection attacks which describe delayed input states. The traditional three-order model of an interconnection power system is modified to a distributed model with coupling control inputs. A sufficient condition to ensure that the closed loop system with asymptotic stability is obtained by using Lyapunov theorem and linear matrix inequality technology. An iterative DMPC algorithm is proposed to design the distributed controllers based on a cooperative control strategy. Finally, a simulation example of a three-machine nine-node power system is presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

In this study, the authors introduce ARCADES (Analysis of Risk from Cyberattack against DEfensive Strategy), a technique to systematically explore the cybersecurity defence strategies based on contingency rankings in power systems. While cybersecurity defensive standards exist, these approaches are primarily based on expert opinions, rather than systematic studies of risk. ARCADES presents an approach to identify improved cybersecurity defensive strategies based on a graph-based cyber-physical security model that is evaluated by resistance-distance metrics and then prioritised based on contingency analysis studies of the system. This study also proposed a technique that identifies the most critical cybersecurity mechanisms to protect the power grid. Planning and operation: those two applications for cybersecurity on power grid mainly explored in this study. For planning, a systematic method is developed to verify the effectiveness of security strategies and for operation, prioritised the security mechanism for auditing and monitoring purpose. As a case study, they analyse the IEEE-14 bus, IEEE-30 bus, and IEEE-118 bus systems, observe the defensive strategies, and calculate substation criticality ranking by using the authors’ proposed method.

Emerging computation and communication technologies ubiquitously deployed in smart grids introduce unprecedented opportunities by enabling vigorous development of innovative business models and applications that aim for improving system efficiency, reliability, resiliency, and interoperability. Smart grids are typical cyber–physical systems (CPSs). The heterogeneous and complex nature of smart grids presents significant challenges introduced by the tight coupling of computation, communication, and physical systems. Here, the authors first provide an overview of smart grids from a CPS perspective. Then, the authors discuss the opportunities and challenges in smart grid design and operation. Next, a co-design framework is introduced and used for designing wide-area damping controller as one of many CPS applications that can be abstracted from various power system layers. The authors conclude that developing a theoretical modelling framework is critical for understanding and managing the complexity and interoperability of smart grids.

Energy Internet (EI) is a revolution of power systems due to its flexible energy control. The smart meters are the key components in EI which perform real-time monitoring and require high demands on quality of services (QoSs). Besides, due to the great performance on resolving device-interconnecting and realising overall network control, software-defined networks (SDNs) are considered as a trend for future EI. However, most existing software-defined EI have all the data processed at SDN controller which makes it difficult to realise fine-grained and deep edge computation and control. Meanwhile, most existing QoS provisioning cannot provide satisfying service for EI because various metering data from smart meters require different time-variant QoS guarantees. To address above challenges, the authors propose a software-defined dynamic QoS provisioning for smart metering in EI using fog computing and network calculus (NC). First, a software-defined EI architecture, where fogs are deployed on smart meters and base stations to realise edge services, is proposed to perform deep edge control in EI. Second, the software-defined dynamic QoS provisioning based on NC theory is proposed to guarantee QoS. Simulations of latency as well as bandwidth utilisation show the advantages of the proposed scheme.

With the growth of complex multiprocessor system-on-chip design and the evolution of process technology, it is crucial to address thermal issues owing to the high-power density of chips. Electronic system level (ESL) design is an acknowledged effective methodology to explore system design by virtual platforms (VPs) at the early stages of integrated circuit (IC) design. Therefore, power- and thermal-aware (PTA) VPs at the ESL are required to explore the thermal issues at the early stages of IC design. Current VPs at the ESL are less discussed in the thermal issues. Therefore, the authors propose a methodology to easily develop VPs from power awareness to power and thermal awareness. In the methodology, a refined thermal engine that has lower computational complexity is proposed to analyse the heat of ICs, and it has high compatibility for integration with power-aware (PA) VPs. In addition, the thermal analysis in the methodology considers the thermal effects of leakage power consumption to reflect the physical temperature of ICs. Thus, system designers can utilise the proposed methodology to easily develop their PA VPs into PTA VPs.

Cyber-physical systems are pervasive in every walk of life. The safety performances of these systems are threatened by external malicious attacks and unforeseen failures. In terms of grid structural characteristics and graph theory, this study proposes a new framework to solve the problem of structural vulnerability which is caused by undetectable attacks in power grids. Based on the linear continuous-time descriptor system model, the digraph associated with structural matrix model for power grid is introduced in detail. To analyse the attack detectability in digraph, a series of basic properties are proposed about digraphs of structural power grids. Then an algorithm is proposed for obtaining the positions of the detection outputs to ensure left-invertible and observability for grid systems. In addition, an algorithm for judging whether there exists a structural vulnerability for the arrangement of the attack inputs and outputs of power grids is proposed, by which one can find disjoint paths if there exists structural vulnerability. Finally, some examples are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Since the concept that inverters can be controlled to behave like a synchronous generator has been proposed, the virtual synchronous generator (VSG) started to become the mainstream control of distributed energy resources connected distributed system. This concept simulates the frequency and voltage regulation of synchronous generator to improve the overall stability of the medium- and low-voltage power system. Although significant research works have considered the application of VSGs in active and reactive power sharing, it seems to be that the issue of the proportional power sharing of VSGs of different capacities has not considered much in the previous works, especially when the distribution lines have increased resistive components. Such resistive disturbs the power flow and causes the power coupling. When focusing eyes on the parallel operation, VSGs need to coordinate parallel operation to increase the microgrid power quality, reliability, and for easy maintenance. Based on an improved droop control and virtual complex impedance, this study adjusts PI controller parameters to implement the proportional power sharing and decoupling for VSGs of different capacities. Simulation results are shown to verify the feasibility and validity of the control method.